Researchers stalked a deadly strain of antibiotic-resistant pneumonia that killed six patients last year at the National Institutes of Health’s elite research hospital in Bethesda, Md., demonstrating that gene sequencing can help in the fight against hospital-acquired infections.

Older fathers pass on more new genetic mutations to their children than younger fathers, increasing their children’s risk of autism, schizophrenia and other diseases, says new research published in Nature.

Dallas Steps Up West Nile War (WSJ): A total of 693 cases of West Nile virus, with 26 deaths, have been reported nationwide this year to the CDC as of Aug. 14. Nearly a quarter of the cases and 10 of the deaths have occurred in Dallas County, making it a hot spot of transmission.

Future of Data: Encoded in DNA (WSJ): In the latest effort to contend with exploding quantities of digital data, researchers encoded an entire book into the genetic molecules of DNA, the basic building block of life, and then accurately read back the text.

A new test to measure the rate of HIV infection in populations is raising hopes among health officials that they’ll be able to figure out more quickly and cheaply which methods work best to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Known as the Limiting Antigen Avidity Enzyme Immunoassay, the test to measure HIV incidence was developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention….

Attending the county fair can expose you to the risk of a new type of swine flu.

Health officials said Friday that nearly 20 people have gotten sick in the past year after coming in close contact with pigs at county or state fairs. A dozen cases have been reported this week, with 10 coming from a county fair held last weekend in southwest Ohio.

The “H3N2” flu strand is still largely a swine virus, limited to pigs, with no evidence yet suggesting humans can pass the illness to one another….

More than half of the people diagnosed with the HIV virus in the U.S. aren’t getting treatment for their infection, the U.S government said today.

African-Americans and younger people are least likely to be receiving regular treatment, meaning that programs to keep them under a doctor’s care aren’t working or aren’t plentiful enough, according to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention….

Today brought two new warnings about contaminated food: The USDA said five people got sick from eating salmonella-contaminated beef, while the FDA separately warned people not to consume oysters from New York’s Oyster Bay Harbor because they’ve been linked to cases of foodborne illness.

Nearly 18,000 cases of whooping cough have been reported in the U.S. so far this year, the AP reports, setting the country on pace for the highest number of cases of the contagious and sometime fatal disease since 1959.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Washington State alone, which declared an epidemic of whooping cough in April, had seen 2,520 cases for the year through June 16, a 14-fold increase from the same period in 2011. This leaves the state on track for its worst year for whooping cough, or pertussis, since 1942….

U.S. health officials are proposing all baby boomers get tested for hepatitis C, because they’re five times more likely than other adults to have the potentially fatal liver virus and many might not know they’re at risk.

Of the more than 70 million baby boomers — those born from 1945 to 1965 – 800,000 may have contracted the liver virus decades ago from unsafe blood transfusions or experimental drug use and not gotten tested, U.S. health officials say. Many neglect getting tested, because they’ve forgotten getting a transfusion or drug use, or they’re unaware they could be at risk. For those baby boomers who do remember risky actions, some may balk at telling their doctor….

Just days after a federal task force urged doctors to counsel young people about the dangers of UV rays, the government is warning that roughly the same number of young adults gets sunburned as did a decade ago, and that the number of people — especially young women — getting risky indoor tans remains high.

Everyone knows there’s an obesity epidemic in America. Now the question is: How much heavier are Americans going to get?

Obesity rates largely leveled off in the U.S. a decade ago, suggesting the worst might have been over. But about one-third of Americans are still obese, and a new study out Monday predicts that percentage will climb to 42% by 2030….

Curious to know which counties are the healthiest—and least so—in every state? How about where your county ranks in terms of smoking and obesity rates, physical inactivity, air pollution, numbers of fast-food restaurants, and other contributors to public health?

The 2012 County Health Rankings report, the third annual, is out today and provides a treasure trove of such data—29 measures in all—for each of the 3,005 counties in the U.S….

Prescription-drug overdose is a growing public-health crisis across the U.S., claiming more than 20,000 lives in 2008, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2010, about 12 million Americans over age 12 reported nonmedical use of prescription painkillers, the medications driving most of the increase in prescription drug overdoses and deaths.

Robin Kellner, a business owner in New York, lost her daughter Zoe to an accidental drug overdose on April 9, 2007 — five years ago next week. Zoe was 22 years old and had been grappling with a drug problem on and off for a few years. Her mother is starting a foundation to support recovering addicts in the arts called the Zoe’s Story Fund….

As the WSJ reports, some parents are worried about the number of vaccines that pediatrics’ and public health groups recommend kids get these days. But just how do those vaccine schedules get made in the first place?

Doctors Struggle to Make Ends Meet (WSJ): Physicians frequently have to make a big financial commitment to upgrade information-technology systems and other services, leaving them fearing getting squeezed as the U.S. moves toward new ways of paying for health care.

The Health Blog has been writing about the nasty bug Clostridium difficile for a while now. As other infections associated with health-care contact have gone down, C. diff infections have been on the rise — and only recently have leveled off. Some 14,000 deaths each year are linked to the bug, which lives in the gut and can cause diarrhea.

The CDC had some new stats on C. diff yesterday. Specifically, it says that 94% of the infections in 2010 were picked up after an encounter with the health-care system — say, an outpatient visit …

E-Cigarette Restrictions: States are proposing to restrict electronic cigarettes — which use battery power to deliver a nicotine mist to users – with bills that would prohibit their sale to minors, include them in public smoking bans, halt internet sales and impose taxes, the WSJ reports. Anti-smoking groups say more needs to be learned about their potential health effects; users and some other experts say the e-cigarettes are less harmful than the regular kind and can help people quit tobacco, the paper says …

Germany’s Merck forecasts little or no improvement in earnings this year, with stiff competition for its blockbuster multiple-sclerosis treatment and higher research spending likely to offset the impact of recent acquisitions.